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Forbidden Love

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Lady who scandalized Bath by taking tea with a rake is sent to France, where she avoids her aunt's marriage schemes with the help of the rake and the unwilling groom.

304 pages, Large Print

First published January 1, 1980

16 people want to read

About the author

Caroline Courtney

48 books28 followers
Her other names: Penny Jordan, Annie Groves, Melinda Wright, Lydia Hitchcock

Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on 24 November 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".

She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialised bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan, and was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale, in shops and she could have them for keeps.

Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her late husband bought her out of his own money at a time when he could ill afford it the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels. Her husband died at the beginning of 21th century.

She has earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for threebair-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her present historical romance novels, she has adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70m of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.

As Widow, Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family. She passed away on 31 December 2011.

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September 11, 2022
From the back of the book.

Description

Sir Hugh Abingdon was not the sort of man a properly bred youn girl would dare to meet alone... so Phyllida brought her chaperone. That was not enough for Bath society. To quiet the ensuing scandal, Phyllida was sent off to France into the protective care of her godmother. Dear Tante Emilie's notion of care involved an arranged marriage to a groom as unwilling to wed as Phyllida herself. So Phyllida planned an escape which became and escapade - which involved Sir Hugh, the forbidden.
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